Lee County Denies FMB, Sanibel Fireworks Funding

On Thursday, the Lee County Attorney’s office officially denied a request made by Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel to use Tourist Development Council funds to help pay for 4th of July Fireworks.

At April’s TDC meeting Sanibel asked for funds to cover $13,000 of their $30,000 fireworks bill and Fort Myers Beach asked for $37,500. Both requests were half the cost of the fireworks shows. It’s unknown as of yet if that means the shows will need to be canceled. We will ask the Mayor on Sunday.

The reason Fort Myers Beach is so much higher is because the fireworks need to be shot from a barge. Before Hurricane Ian the pier (owned by Lee County) was used as the staging area. The cost to rent the barge is nearly $40,000. The last 3 fireworks celebrations on Fort Myers Beach originated from a barge, the last one to celebrate kick off of the 2025 New Year was blurred by an unexpected midnight fog.

Sanibel Vice Mayor Holly Smith said this fight for the funds is not over yet. “There is $53 million in reserves. We deserve this funding. Sanibel and FMB have contributed substantially to fund TDC/VCB activities through the bed tax collection. This is such a small ask to promote and celebrate the Islands and we have NEVER asked before.”

Good morning. An opinion was requested regarding whether payment for fireworks may be funded with tourist development tax revenues under Section 125.0104(5)(a)2., relating to the promotion and advertising of tourism.

Florida Statutes, section 125.0104 authorizes a county to impose a tourist development tax. Subsection (5)(a) of the statute provides, that funds collected by the County for this tax can only be used for the following purposes:

–  To promote and advertise tourism in this state and nationally and internationally; however, if tax revenues are expended for an activity, service, venue, or event, the activity, service, venue, or event must have as one of its main purposes the attraction of tourists as evidenced by the promotion of the activity, service, venue, or event to tourists;

– To fund convention bureaus, tourist bureaus, tourist information centers, and news bureaus as county agencies or by contract with the chambers of commerce or similar associations in the county, which may include any indirect administrative costs for services performed by the county on behalf of the promotion agency;

– To finance beach park facilities, or beach, channel, estuary, or lagoon improvement, maintenance, renourishment, restoration, and erosion control, including construction of beach groins and shoreline protection, enhancement, cleanup, or restoration of inland lakes and rivers to which there is public access as those uses relate to the physical preservation of the beach, shoreline, channel, estuary, lagoon, or inland lake or river. However, any funds identified by a county as the local matching source for beach renourishment, restoration, or erosion control projects included in the long-range budget plan of the state’s Beach Management Plan, pursuant to s. 161.091, or funds contractually obligated by a county in the financial plan for a federally authorized shore protection project may not be used or loaned for any other purpose. In counties of fewer than 100,000 population, up to 10 percent of the revenues from the tourist development tax may be used for beach park facilities.

Subsection (5)(e) limits the use of these funds to the purposes expressly authorized and any other use is “expressly prohibited.” Thus, under subsection 125.0104(5)(a), the use of tourist development tax proceeds is restricted to certain purposes.

Based on the Lee County case, this project is not an authorized use of tourist development tax revenues.